Beyond the Room: What Students Expect from PBSA Today

What students expect from Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) is changing. Affordability remains critical, while location, lifestyle and opportunities to study and connect are increasingly shaping where students choose to live.

For developers, universities and designers, this means focusing investment where it adds genuine value to the student experience.

Location is About Lifestyle, Not Just the Campus

Students are increasingly willing to travel to university if it means living closer to the food, nightlife and everyday amenity they value. Affordability is also particularly important for international students arriving from countries with a lower cost of living and is driving universities to consider how they can deliver accommodation at a lower price point.

At the same time, where students live is increasingly where they learn. With learning taking place online, on demand and beyond campus, students are spending more time studying from their accommodation. Reliable wi-fi is viewed by students as a fundamental human right, alongside spaces for individual study, group work and collaboration.

Better Amenity, Not Simply More Amenity

Getting the fundamentals right extends beyond the individual room. With compact rooms, communal spaces play an important role in supporting different modes of study, everyday life and connection. The most effective shared spaces are designed with the right scale, location and mix of facilities.

Everyday spaces can be just as important in creating community. Cafés and convenience retail provide natural opportunities for students to cross paths, while resident events such as orientation, dinners and run clubs give them further reasons to connect.

At EPIISOD Macquarie Park, our design places a rooftop pool within a broader wellness precinct, alongside a large gym overlooking the surrounding rooftops and flexible spaces for activities including yoga and dance. The pool has become a meeting point and a feature residents appear proud of, regularly featuring in images shared by students on social media.

For clients, value also extends beyond the student experience. Designing with long-term operation in mind – minimising maintenance or making buildings easier to maintain – can help reduce ongoing operational costs.

What Can Australia Learn From Europe?

PBSA design in Australia is right up there with international standards, from well-planned rooms and communal spaces to outdoor spaces that take advantage of our great climate through courtyards, rooftop terraces and pools.

Recent PCA PBSA study tours of Amsterdam and London highlighted opportunities to think differently. In Amsterdam, Hotel Casa and The Social Hub demonstrate how flexible student and hotel accommodation can make better use of capacity during and outside university semesters and create a more dynamic social mix.

While Australia’s planning environment doesn’t currently enable the same degree of flexibility, these models raise an interesting question: could our student accommodation work harder throughout the year?

That question becomes particularly relevant as international universities strengthen their own tertiary education offer and students have greater access to remote learning. The experience of studying in person on campus in Australia will become an increasingly important differentiator.

Well-designed PBSA has a role to play in that experience, creating places where students can live, study and collaborate in person – developing professional networks and interpersonal skills that can’t be replicated online.

Interested in the future of student living? Connect with Brian Mariotti on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.